Ok. I’m going to share my best explanation as to why tomato prices are high. I’m going to do it as definitively and comprehensively as I can, so that next year when they’re high in June I can point everyone back to this thread.

https://twitter.com/tazarceforever/status/1802639299340374196

Tomatoes are SEASONAL.

All over the world, open-field tomatoes are seasonal. They need cool nights, hot days, and a dry climate.

In Nigeria during the rainy season, it is hard to grow open-field tomatoes.

EVERY YEAR in June, the prices go up. Every year guys.

His Highness Khalifa Muhammad Sanusi II has got to be one of my top truth-tellers.

First, the good news: the war in Ukraine has negatively impacted many nations/regions, but Sub-Saharan Africa is actually doing BETTER than predicted so far this year. Then, the bad news: if our woes in Nigeria can’t be linked to the war in Ukraine, that means our woes in Nigeria are linked to…. Nigeria. The dollar is gaining strength and we continue to be an oil economy with no oil revenue.

#KADInvest7

I’ve had a lot of strange experiences living in Nigeria for the past 12 years, but this is a new one! Currently flying from Lagos to Kaduna with a plane full of soldiers… 😳 Never seen anything like it! We are all mixed together, civilians and men/women in uniform. I tried to ask one of them about why they are flying commercial but he stonewalled me. I was like… “don’t you usually fly in military planes?” And he said “not today.”

Scientists love to argue about nature versus nurture. The “nature” argument makes the case that everything we are today and everything we will become tomorrow is all a result of our genetic background – it’s almost an argument about destiny. If you’ve seen the movie GATTACA, you will understand this argument perfectly.

A hard but important read. 👇🏾

I’m not sure how to organize my thoughts... I have friends & loved ones who served, & I don’t want to believe it was such a colossal waste. Some parts of this article are reminiscent of Vietnam, others reflexively make me think of Nigeria...

https://twitter.com/DamonLinker/status/1427021653976965123

I’ve pasted some key parts of the article that stood out to me below.

"Supported by decades of research, the Lack of Fit model demonstrates that women face discrimination when there is a mismatch or “lack of fit” between the attributes perceived necessary for success in a male-typed domain and those that women are stereotypically believed to have." "As a consequence, women are expected to be less capable than their male colleagues in male-dominated work contexts unless objective evidence of actual task performance proves otherwise."
advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/48/e…

Here are my thoughts on farming as a lifestyle versus farming as a business. Issa thread! Let’s see how far I get before this train starts moving... 🚂

🧵🪡🧵🪡

https://twitter.com/ShoutsAndMiras/status/1385306300473561090

The long and short of things is that when you’re farming as a lifestyle, you are farming for what you can eat. By contrast, when you’re farming as a business, you are trying to get MORE out of the ground than what you put in (ie you are trying to turn a profit).

When people ask me if they can invest in farmers through TJ, I try to explain that it's not easy to deliver returns like this. We're only now getting to the point where we can make farmers productive enough to walk away with a 20% profit after paying back their loans.

1/

https://twitter.com/ugodre/status/1314448053080920064

We effectively charge about 5% interest over the course of the season, and we're lending to the farmers against our own balance sheet. So, the overall profit of the farm is 25%. The farmer gets 20% and we get 5%.

If we took 3rd party money... the farmers profit would go down. 2/

1. Determinate vs Indeterminate:

"Determinate tomatoes grow to a fixed mature size and ripen all their fruit in a short period (usually about two weeks). Once this first flush of fruit has ripened, the plant will begin to diminish in vigor and will set little to no new fruit."

https://twitter.com/eniolafafa/status/1312663697127546881

"Determinate tomato varieties are often referred to as “bush” tomatoes because they do not continue extending in length throughout the growing season. They are generally smaller plants than indeterminate tomatoes, with most growing to a compact 4 to 5 feet tall."

Ok, so here’s what happened. Issa thread!

https://twitter.com/shoutsandmiras/status/1312372153703071744

Back in December of 2015 (holy moly how was it so long ago?), I was trying to find a permanent location for Tomato Jos. We were located in my fave village for life: Panda. Technically Panda is in Karu LGA, Nasarawa, though confusingly part of the the village is in Kaduna State.

I’m behind you 100% on this Pineapple Express saga, friend!
1. You have a product. You know what the quality of that product needs to be.
2. The millions of pineapples rotting in Edo State do not meet your quality requirements.
3. So, you do not choose to buy them.

Simple!

https://twitter.com/AffiSupaStar/status/1312314570200035328

Folks wanna talk about “mopping up waste” but just think about this. Even if the quality were good enough, if you’re building a business on buying at throwaway prices, you’re hinging on the fact that the farmer is making a loss by selling to you. That’s not a sustainable model.

Poor Micaëla never stood a chance. I’m watching Carmen, the opera, for the first time. It opens with Micaëla, a village woman, looking for Don Jose at the military office in the Seville town square. The officers there tell her he’ll be there at the next shift change. They’re kinda rowdy & she’s not feeling it.

I’ve been in this position before too... pele. I’m glad you were able to get to Abuja, but this ticketing process needs a structural change.

https://twitter.com/Aliyussufiy/status/1305817575545352193

What seems to happen now is that once enough people complain, they change out (fire) the employees. This only alleviates the situation in the short term. Within weeks, the new employees have a system in place identical (or at least equivalent) to what was there before.

Parsees: willing to take entrepreneurial risk since the 16th century! 💪🏽 💪🏽

(We also apparently ran the first drug cartels, and we don’t want to own up to the fact that our skin color made us “natural” local allies for the Portuguese and British 😬)

It’s legit amazing that the Tata group has been around for 150 years though. Hats off to my boy Jamsetji - he was a real one 👊🏽

My statement at this evening's public hearing about whether or not the East Cambridge "Neighborhood Conservative District" study should continue:

My name is Mira Mehta and I live at [redacted] in District 13. I was born in Cambridge in 1984 and I am a home owner. I have never given public comment before but this is an important issue for me. If we are not allowed to have Conservation District community meetings due to COVID-19 to provide oversight to the ongoing study, then the study should not be renewed.

Psyching myself up for what I’m sure will be another epic phone battle with my bank... I started the call at 12:04pm. Who wants to guess how long it will take me to reach an agent?

Hi folks! For better or worse, my tweet last week got a lot of attention and I just want to clarify a couple of important points. I like and respect all of my investors. I’m grateful for their support, which extends well beyond the financial investment itself. Prior to the Series A, I had a 2-person board which has now expanded to 5: 2 investors, 2 members of the management team, and 1 independent.

I just found out about the @blindianproject from an Indian friend of mine on Instagram who’s partner is black, and I am so glad this platform exists. I grew up “Findian” with a Finnish mom and Indian dad, and while the cultural differences were stark, at least everyone in my dad’s family and community was cool with my white mom (NB this absolutely wouldn’t have been the case I’d had an Indian/Parsee mom and a Finnish dad).

I know a few ppl raising money for their respective companies and I'm incensed by the stories they tell me. Investors who want double their money if additional funds are raised sooner (sooner!) than the target, investors who don't want funds to be used to replay director loans... ... Investors who claim there's not enough impact, or the impact is the "wrong kind" of impact, or the "potential" for scale is too low, investors who say "you're raising too much for your scale," investors who say "you're raising too little to be worth our time..."

An excerpt from Maya Angelou’s Letter to my Daughter

Condolences

For too brief a moment in the universe the veil was lifted. The mysterious became known. Questions met answers somewhere behind the stars. Furrowed brows were smoothed & eyelids closed over long unblinking stares. Your beloved occupied the cosmos. You awoke to sunrays & nestled down to sleep in moonlight. All life was a gift open to you & burgeoning for you. Choirs sang to harps & your feet moved to ancestral drumbeats. For you were sustaining & being sustained by the arms of your beloved.

Jeez Louise, this is grim... nairametrics.com/2019/08/20/nig… Another article here with a chart that breaks down household expenditures... (thank you @Nairametrics for the great reporting)
nairametrics.com/2020/05/11/nig…